Okay, so today’s entry is going to be a bit different. It’s purely speculation, based on my own opinion and only formulated from what I know (about electromechanical design) and what I’ve seen and heard in news broadcasts. (Apart from that today was fairly dull, with mainly shit weather and nothing really much happened).

So today there was an accident. And no it wasn’t in a helicopter. It was in a theme park. One which I’ve attended on numerous occasions. Alton Towers. Been running for what now, thirty years, never with a ‘major’ accident. The ride in question was ‘The Smiler’ and £18 million pound state of the art roller coaster, launched in 2013 and has been continually plagued with problems.

First I’ll just say that my thoughts are with the sixteen people involved and with their families, you do not go to a theme park and expect to possibly loose your limbs.

Okay, so now follows my analysis. This is just my opinion, but I’ve got a bit of an interest in how things work and are designed, so know a reasonable amount about electromechanical engineering and have worked in this very industry.

This ride as I said has been plagued with problems. On its press launch it left a bunch of journalists stuck on the lift hill, bits have fallen off it and it’s had numerous closures for ‘technical’ problems. I’ll hazard a guess at what these ‘technical’ problems are and it’s all down to one device, proximity sensors. Now these are ‘hall-effect’ devices and to be honest are a major pain in the ass. In a nice clean industrial setting on a conveyer belt they work fine. But you stick them out in the nice British weather and they become very unreliable. They work on the theory that when a magnet passes the front it operates a switch. The design is very good, the problem then comes with weather proofing and mechanical stability, you have all the cabling and everything else. These coasters are usually designed with triple redundant systems. That is, there are three separate circuits that all have to agree. I’ll explain. You have a car going down the track, before it you have a brake and before the next section you have three hall-effect sensors. The brake is applied (and it’s fail safe pneumatic, so if power or air fails, brake is on), this will stop any car entering this section of the track. All three sensors have to be triggered before the brake is released. Perfect safety system, triple redundancy. Now what happens if one of those sensors is a bit dodgy? That brake isn’t going to release, the ride then breaks down and everyone gets pissed off. £18 million quids worth of scrap. So what are the options? Well, replace or adjust the sensor is of course the correct option. This requires a mechanic, possibly a new sensor. And the most important point for a park like this….time. It’s going to take a mechanic probably an hour to find the dodgy sensor, possibly another one to change it and then this being a critical system would need to be checked by a second mechanic (this is standard procedure on any mission critical system, this is why in this country we have very few planes falling out of the sky because someone failed to put all the bolts in). That’s about three hours down the pan due to a faulty sensor and this ride probably has around two hundred of the things.

So what happens instead? Well operators get complacent. They work out that if the brake jams a car on a section of the track that they can just reset the system and off it will go. They just need to send round an empty car to make sure it gets through all the sensors and all will be okay.

So what happened this time? They got unlucky, well the people on the car got unlucky. From what I can gather, the ride suffered yet another ‘technical failure’. They sent an empty car round. Due to the weight of an empty car it didn’t make it round one of the loops. No one noticed this. Blokie in operations box gets yet another bloody sensor error. Shuts the system down and restarts it. The ride computer now has no idea that it has a car stuck on a section of track. They send a car round now with people on it. All the sensors work correctly, remember it has no idea a car is on track because the system has been reset. The car then ploughs clean into the back of the stalled one and bang. Game over for sixteen people, four of them seriously.

So who’s to blame? Is it the manufacturer for producing a technically advanced ride with lots of safety systems that could cause too many false positives and then cause issues for the operators due to excessive downtime? Is it maintenance for possibly bypassing some safety systems or perhaps not doing routine maintenance properly? Or is it the operators for becoming too complacent and possibly working out ways to bypass these systems?

One things for certain, those sixteen people are certainly not to blame. Alton Towers is closed tomorrow. Health and safety executive are of course involved, there will be a full investigation. That ride will probably be closed for at least the rest of the year and may indeed never operate again. It cost £18 million, but if the ambulance chaser lawyers get involved then that £18 million will be a drop in the ocean to what they will be paying out in compensation. The Merlin group have already dropped 3% on FTSE, I can see them plummeting a lot further in coming days.

I don’t think it will be the end of Alton Towers, but ‘The Smiler’ certainly isn’t smiling anymore.

What the hell has happened to the bloody weather? It’s been pissing down now for the bulk of the day. Even Sasha couldn’t be arsed to go on a long walk. It’s now gone very windy and bloody cold.

Spent the bulk of the day catching up and building data. I’ve done no code builds at all. Apart from walking the dog, not much else got done. Combat this evening was fun, was carried out by a guy called Nick who seems to be a fan of late 90’s rave and Guns n’ Roses. Still, it was pretty high energy.

My throat is better today, but I still have some hangover of lurgie, so I think I’m going to have an early night.

Just remember gentle reader, not everything you read on social media is accurate, some of it is carefully placed to be read by certain parties. Lets just say that I retain the right to fuck someone completely over in a millisecond. After todays events the ball is securely in my court and I’m just gently bouncing it on the base line, contemplating my next shot. That’s all I’m going to say on the matter for the moment, other than at one point today I did feel like Blofeld on a giant swivel chair stroking a large white pussy, with the power to destroy someone then and there.

Jamie said last night was the best sleep he’d had in ages. I spent seven hours wide awake with a sore throat, thinking that if I could press a button there and then to end my life I would have gone for it, it was like being permanently poked with daggers.

The weather today was very strange, I took Sasha out and it was bloody awful. I then went out by myself and found a Geocache which was a DNF before and it had slightly improved. In between all this I’d been writing a stack of TripAdvisor reviews. Lost count how many, and I’ve only just left Disney. I then went out for an evening walk, apart from it being a bit nippy, it was actually lovely. Did the accounts and more bloody reviews.

Jamie is cooking tonight, so the only thing I’m likely to die of in the next 24 hours is food poisoning.

Woke up in a foul mood and it hasn’t really improved all day. Got up and walked Sasha. Then sorted out some of the holiday photos. We then walked into town. Picked up that Blu-ray of ‘Pulp Fiction’. Been getting slowly pissed off with people at work, now just tempted to leave them to it and pursue other things. Tonight we went to Bath and saw ‘Spamalot’, it was very good. It lightened my mood somewhat, that lasted about ten minutes.

Yesterday mainly started in bed. Then after a while I did eventually get up and went Geocaching for an hour or so as there were a couple of new ones just up the A38. Found both of those no problem. Then had the sudden desire to tidy up the garden. Spent about four hours chopping up tree bits and jamming it all in the bin. Had a shower and then went to the pub with my sister. Much larger was drunk.

So this morning I had breakfast at the usual time and did coffee. Did some reading and then had more coffee. We popped to the mall. I then attacked the garden some more. Walked to the gym. Got stared at by lots of people. I didn’t think I was that ugly, until I realised looking in the mirror, both arms are completely covered in cuts. It looks like I’ve had a very depressing week and had a go at my wrists. Anyway, got through Pump without committing suicide, and walked home. Then spent another hour attacking the garden. I’m not sure what’s thorn and whats flower, so basically I’m just hacking the lot out.

I think I reached the point in my life where I’m considering a water feature.

After a fucking awful nights lack of sleep. All I can remember was being bitten to fuck all night. Now I would have expected this in Africa, or even the Caribbean but not Nice. I was fairly pissed but it was still vey uncomfortable. I’m covered in bite marks. Had breakfast. Went for a wonder. We then packed and checked out. Grabbed some lunch, well breakfast for bum boy. Waited for our transfer, which was late, but was in a Mercedes, so was forgiven. Flight was very uneventful. There was a guy behind me who was hamming it up big time about being an accredited actor, spending a week in Cannes. I saw him afterwards, a good job there is work for fucking ugly actors. Mother drove us home. I can go on every roller coaster in the world and feel some apprehensive, but I only feel truly terrified when I’m in the front seat and she’s driving babbling crap. I tried to tell her some bits about the holiday, but they just weren’t as important as her week or anecdotes from thirty years ago. I’ve given up trying. At the end of the day it cost me thirty quid, which is about half the cost of a taxi or parking so I’ll let it go. She dropped us off, used the loo and buggered off. We thought we’d got shot of her, until she rang the bell and moaned about her light being knackered and ‘if you get five minutes’, can I pop in and sort it out for her. Plus I couldn’t give a shit if she hasn’t had wine for three weeks. I’d got shit-faced on a bottle a night for the past couple of weeks thank you very much. Still. Unpacked. Checked the credit card. Didn’t spend as much as I’d thought, although I did knock up some fairly impressive bar bills. Back to just idling. Now just accelerating towards death again. At least I can go to bed and not be bitten by something.

So started this morning with the bizarest of dreams. Nat’s brother had stolen my car and kept it hidden for ten years. It’s all too bloody bizare to go into. After breakfast we walked the couple of minutes to the train station and got the train to Cannes. I took the guide book with me and we followed it around and did the sights. We ended up at a small restaurant for lunch and sat there for an hour or so before doing the last part of the tour. Got the train back and then had a nap. I had a horrible dream, I was at Mark’s funeral, but he wasn’t actually dead.

Had a shaower and we ventured out less than a minute away to a Chinese and had a lovely meal. People say the French are arrogant and rude, but on no occasion did we find them anything but polite and friendly. We’ve really enjoyed our time here. It’s certainly been just a little bit different. If we hadn’t been under considerable time pressure we would have not given France a second thought. We have really enjoyed it, would we come back here again? No, certainly not. But we would not have missed it for the world.

For the first time this holiday I didn’t set the alarm. I went to sleep half cut probably and remember waking quite early with a pain on my back. After further investigation it turned out that I’d fallen asleep on a bottle top, after removing it I was somewhat much happier. Had breakfast by myself. I then sneeked off for a bit of a walk down to the coast. Came back and bum boy was still in bed. We eventually ventured out. I had the town map. We covered basically about five square miles in four hours. By the end we were very dehydrated and hungry, so we dived in a random cafe on the promenade and had a meal and a beer. Picked up a few bits of tat and headed back for a long nap. Went out for dinner, quite local as it was raining. Somewhat disappointed in the local restaurants, expecting more seafood, but basically bugger all. Anyway, had fish and chips, a beer and a bottle of wine. Nice. Another day over, can’t complain at all really. Tomorrow I think we are venturing to Cannes.

Okay, so we both had breakfast this morning, which was quite unusual to start with. We walked to the station, got a ticket and then descended on Monaco. A nice little town on the ass end of nowhere. It was packed. Stupid place. We walked down the street and there was a shop, not selling houses as normal, but selling aircraft. It’s that kind of town. We meandered for a while but soon headed up the hills and handed our ticket over. We were right on top of the camera runs. Managed to get a nice spot overlooking around four sections of the track. The race itself was fairly dull until the last ten minutes. Lewis Hamilton got screwed by his team once again. I was pretty much rooted to the spot for two hours. I did have one really annoying ‘selfie’ girl who was getting closer and closer to the wall and kept banging into me. In the end I just turned round and stared into her phone. She then turned to me and said ‘ah thankyou’ and finally fucked off. Good job as I’d actually enjoy helping her over the wall and the forty foot drop below. Headed back on the train. Had a bit of a snooze and then we headed out for food. Tonight we had the Nice traditional Chinese.

So the alarm went off at 6AM. I got up. Jamie didn’t. I ate breakfast pretty much to myself, apart from the receptionist. We got on the road about half eight, a bit shocked the sat-nav said about six thirty for arrval. Anyway, we got going. It was one hell of a drive, I stopped for a piss about four times. And fuel. Eleven hours and about 100 Euro in tolls later, we finally arrived in Nice. After a bit of pissing about we managed to park the car in the correct place, which did envolve driving up the worlds steepest bloody ramp. The car was on full lock, how the hell I got it up five levels without scraping anything Christ alone knows. We walked to the hotel which was a few minutes away. It’s a cheap Best Western, no bar, but breakfast included. I’ve stayed in bigger cupboards, but it’ll do for a few days. We ventured out and had an Indian. As they say, when in France…Anyway, made it back to the room, now watching the Eurovison Song Contest. Tomorrow we do F1.